Archaeological Evidence of Casual Snacking and Resource Provisioning at Khirbat al-Jariya (ca. Eleventh to Tenth Centuries BCE), an Iron-Age Copper Production Site

Abstract

In this chapter we present the results of a paleobotanical analysis of Khirbat al-Jariya, an Iron-Age (ca. eleventh to tenth centuries BCE) copper smelting workshop in Faynan, Jordan. The macrobotanical collection was dominated by easily procured fruits and nuts that required little preparation, such as dates (Phoenix dactylifera), grapes (Vitis sp.) and figs (Ficus sp.) which we characterize as likely "snack foods." Evidence for grain processing, in terms of cleaning and removal of chaff, is largely absent, and there is no meaningful spatial patterning to the discard of food debris. This suggests that food consumption was a casual process at Khirbat al-Jariya and that food products requiring preparation were processed elsewhere. Comparing this data to that of contemporary sites indicates that this dominance of snack foods is particular to the Faynan region. It is possible that Khirbat al-Jariya was only seasonally occupied, under which circumstances a practice of casual snacking supplemented by prepared foods from elsewhere was sustainable. This complicates the typical binary of "consumer" and "producer," and we argue that such distinctions may be as much a result of sampling strategies and spatial patterning. We also evaluate how sampling strategies played a role in interpreting the data from Khirbat al-Jariya, which may represent the casual snacking behavior associated with an itinerant industrial community rather than the full spectrum of subsis-Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at